A Few Suggestions/Questions

Donor Ranks
Will they ever happen? This isn’t a ‘OMG PLS IMPLEMENT NOW WTFBBQ’ - I’m just asking out of curiosity, because many other forums operate this system. I’m also aware that back when it was first created RealmEye accepted donations, but that these were closed down (presumably when ad revenue picked up a little). Just curious if the site is still reticent about accepting donations, or if we’ll be able to support RealmEye by buying ranks to give us certain forum perks (eg ability to give reputation to/take reputation from other users).

Reputation System
Kinda goes hand in hand with the above, insofar as greater rep perks are a good thing to give to Donors. I know that right now we have Likes, but a reputation system would be very useful on these forums for vouches for traders/key sellers, if nothing else.

You can find information about the trust level system in this thread:

It’s not the same thing - a reputation system is community-managed, rather than being conferred on the user by the site for achieving certain pre-set goals. For instance, I may personally not trust User X because they’ve done some sketchy deals with me in the past, so I’ll give leave a -1 reputation on their account explaining that, which is then visible to all other users. However, User X might be really active on the forums and so have a high ‘trust level’, even if their actions in-game are shady and they have scam reports.

Likewise, User Y might have a low trust level because they’re not active on the forum. However, they deal honestly and fairly, and so they may have accrued a high reputation from users impressed by their demeanour.

To see the reputation system in action, visit any forum running MyBB. It fosters bonds between members, helps the community avoid scammers, and is another way of rewarding high-quality content (because people +rep for good content, rite).

Just like upvoting/downvoting on Reddit is such a good thing. Someone would have to monitor all these reputation pluses/minuses, most of it would still be “he said/she said” things with no evidence to back it up.

Just let me remind about the infamous Floflorian’s/Dirkheads’/whoever else was involved Cheater Lists, which (unlike HeroMax’s) didn’t require a shred of evidence and were tagging people as cheaters based on what some random dude thinks.

RotMG community in general is too childish/edgy to be allowed to vote about other people’s trustworthiness. Sure, there might be individuals, who wouldn’t mess up the system, but once the kids get their hands on these buttons, we’re gonna have a hot mess of fanboyism and hate.

Not at all. Downvoting a post is a comment on that post. Giving someone reputation is a comment on that user, and those are different things entirely.

If you look at sites that implement this system, you’ll see that it works incredibly well in practice: people are disincentivised from leaving baseless/random negative reputation, because not only is that usually against the rules, but the person who they left it on is well within their rights to retaliate by leaving negative reputation on them calling them out for leaving bogus rep.

The moderation of such a system is actually pretty easy. Most forums have these rules:

1. No gang-rep (ie where groups of people gang up on one person)
2. No begging/asking for/implying you want rep
3. If leaving a rep related to a scam report, proof of the scam must be included in the reputation reason
4. No spam reps/rep-for-rep (ie just going around leaving reps on everyone in the hope of getting rep in return. It’s worth mentioning that you can only leave reputation x number of times a day)
5. No buying or selling reputation

and one or two others. It’s basically used as a system whereby you or I could view a key seller in the marketplace and quickly determine if they have vouches. Right now, we can see a key seller and have no idea if they’re legit or a scammer, because trust levels don’t comment on their behaviour or trustworthiness but only on their forum activity. Under a reputation system, we can click through to their rep and see if others have vouched for them or not, thus protecting the community.

And yes, silly reputations are left (both positive and negative). That’s part and parcel of the system, though, and the benefits of preventing scams far outweigh the harms, especially because everyone can simply overlook reputation that’s obviously baseless or random and examine the reputation that matters (scam reports, vouches etc).

Hope that explains a bit about it

Reputation systems are little more than popularity/unpopularity contests, and are far too susceptible to griefing. I’ve seen it work, but i’ve also seen it blow up.

Aside from that, though, it doesn’t appear this forum system has a plugin for this feature. Not sure if the RealmEye guys would be up to writing one from scratch, considering they have scammer flagging built into the site, and this forum has likes and flags. You can see how well liked other users are by viewing their profile.

Both of these, when paired up with users acting like little kids can be severely abused.

Other than that - I just don’t feel like trusting ANYONE in RotMG and I don’t think some reputation system is gonna change that. Friends +rep friends, scammers +rep scammers, not everyone is running around with Bandicam attached to record everything and screenshots are simple to edit.

If people started getting +reps due to having a YouTube channel, being popular, streaming or other stuff, it would pretty much defy the purpose of having reputation. As much as negative claims can be checked for and controlled, coming up with some questionable “nice thing” to +rep someone is pretty easy.

“Dude dragged on me in Abyss - -rep”
“guy gave me 2 vit, nice bro!”
“appeared in my realm as soon as Sphinx spawned, notifier user!”

We already had post farming with Kabam forums, I don’t think we need rep farmers.

Also it’s worth noting that just because someone has high reputation doesn’t mean they won’t scam. It just means they haven’t scammed yet or been caught/reported. RWT subreddit also has a vouching system, popular hacking forums have reputation as well as vouches. Would I trust any of these people? Nope.

I’m all for a vouch thread with proof required (like was mentioned here) and a one-scam-always-scammer approach, but nothing that could stroke anyone’s ego.

The thing about reputation, aside from everything else that’s already been pointed out in this thread, is that it doesn’t tell you anything.

Does someone have good rep because they’ve been a friendly player? Because they’re a trusted seller? Because they’re a trusted buyer (thinking of keys here)?
Does someone have negative rep because they drag? Or scam? Or use hacks? Or insult people all the time?

Every time you look at someone’s profile, you’d need to play internet detective to know what the hell their rep score actually means. And that’s assuming the system is properly moderated and not constantly ruined by assholes and mass bots.

@RMGnoob Sigh, I already covered this…

For instance, I may personally not trust User X because they’ve done some sketchy deals with me in the past, so I’ll leave a -1 reputation on their account explaining that, which is then visible to all other users.

All left reputation requires a reason.

Doc’s post

Thanks, I’ve not actually seen this forum’s platform before. It’s interesting.
Anything on donor ranks?

SIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGHHHHHHHH

which means I need to read every single comment left on that person’s profile, then look up all the people who left a comment to see if they’re trustworthy, etc…

Again, I don’t see why you would bother putting a system like this in place just to make everyone’s life more complicated.

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